


Under the Moons of Darillium: Part 14 The Lost Pleiad

by Stardance1



Series: Under the Moons of Darillium: A Night of Adventures [14]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio), The Diary of River Song (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/M, Post-Episode: 2015 Xmas The Husbands of River Song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 11:33:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17283281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stardance1/pseuds/Stardance1
Summary: New Year's Day has arrived on Darillium, but will the Doctor and River be able to enjoy their planned Hogmanay festivities, or will the arrival of a dangerous rogue planet at the edge of the solar system spell an end ... to their last night... and the entire planet.





	Under the Moons of Darillium: Part 14 The Lost Pleiad

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that this is part of a series.

’Twas twenty hours to the New Year, when nestled deep inside the Tardis,  
Two timelords were waking to a holiday that could not be dismissed;  
They’d each planned and each plotted to celebrate Hogmanay with care,  
Knowing that when this night was over they might no longer be there.

The Doctor was making sure that they’d both be well fed,  
Humming in the kitchen while whipping up quite the spread:  
Freshly baked scones laid with berries, and cream that was clotted,  
Scotch eggs, steak pies, and a tipsy laird dessert that with whisky was dotted. 

River secretly planned for visits from their first-footed friends;  
She organized the games, dancing, drinks, and all odds and ends;  
The servers, the Voords, Alphonse and the Auton all confirmed their assignation,  
making the New Year Tardis festivity of the Highland ritual a prime destination. 

After hours of working they jumped back into bed,  
To cherish one another from each toe to their head;  
Under the moons of Darillium they whispered each vow,  
Always and completely... maximize the here and now. 

_________________________

The Doctor had taken the Tardis back to the site of the radio telescope, and parked it next to the large research and observatory facility. The building stood dark and empty, closed up tightly for the new year's holiday.  
Exiting the Tardis, the Doctor slowly climbed up the rusty white metal grate steps of the mast tower next to the telescope; there in an unassuming corner he found the small cramped steering room, unlocked it with a burst from his sonic screwdriver, and entered.  
The room itself couldn’t have been much bigger than 8 by 8 feet, and most of that square footage was taken up by the steering equipment.  
In front of the Doctor there were three rounded edge monitors built into the upper control panel, all of which had screens that were dark but still humming with the surreal blue glow of energy.  
The control deck was filled with technical measurement instrumentation, gauges, and multitudes of bold red switches and buttons, all set to “on” but still registering as inactive.  
On the upper right hand side he found the access panel.  
He opened it and began untangling the disarray.  
For the next hour he repaired, rewired, and reinstalled.  
When he snapped the cover of the access panel shut, he was only surrounded by four connectors, no more than three chips, and a whole handful off left over gears and ridiculously tiny screws that couldn’t possibly have had a use.  
Now ready to plug in the last of the new cabling, he stood up and looked out of a tiny portal window toward the large satellite beside the mast.  
He smiled to himself. It was exactly as he had suspected.  
Patiently waiting for him, River had climbed into the parabolic dish, reclined on one of the antenna rays, and was looking up towards the stars.  
Though he needed to get her attention to finish the repairs, he paused for a moment to just enjoy watching her.  
Her face, happy and relaxed as she raptly observed the sky, was bathed in moonlight. It cast shadows and highlights as it traced over her features and the curls of her hair. The lattice of the white satellite disk below her radiated around her like beautiful lace, an otherworldly snowflake cocoon.  
He took out his sonic and pressed the switch.  
In her pocket her sonic buzzed. She took it out, looked momentarily at the light, and then turned her face up to him and smiled.  
She climbed down the telescope, walked over to the mast, and went up the steps to the cramped room to meet the Doctor.  
He was sitting at the control panel when she walked in behind him.  
Her skin was frosty from her venture outdoors, but she placed a cool kiss on his cheek.  
“Did you call me a snow queen?”  
He chuckled, “Is that what the sonic said? Perhaps it was something like that…”  
“It’s New Year’s Eve Doctor, almost Hogmanay, why do you have to fix this now?"  
He stood up to embrace her, and then reclined against the wall, his hands in his front trouser pockets, the red lining of his overcoat framing his hands.  
“Well believe it or not River, they were less than pleased when I disrupted the radio telescope… “  
“To save Darillium from invasion?”  
“I promised to connect everything back…”  
“And it seems like you did more than that…” River said eying the left over pieces and knowing full well that the Doctor would never have been able to resist leaving well enough alone. She smirked.  
“I may have added some modifications…”  
“Slight enhancements?”  
“Once it’s recalibrated, the receiver should be amplified to see further past the edge of their solar system.”  
They grinned at each other. The Doctor made the final connections and set everything into motion with a flare from his sonic.  
The data acquisition light on the control panel flashed green, and the monitors began to beep and ring as they received row after row of transmitted numerical field chains.  
But rather than celebrate, the Doctor pulled the chair jarringly over to the panel and sat back down.  
He stared at the monitor screens.  
The color of his face turned ashen grey and his eyes opened wider than River had ever seen them.  
“Doctor… what’s wrong?” River asked softly.  
“I have to unplug the cables again…”  
“Why, did some circuits get crossed?” she asked hopefully.  
He shook his head. “I need to connect it back up to the Tardis and see everything through our monitors there….”  
“Is there something wrong?”  
“I don’t know! Maybe!”  
“Then surely it can wait until later…”  
He stood up again. Turned to face her and placed his hands steadily on her shoulders. “If we wait, River, there might not be a later.”  
With that he grabbed the thick multi-cable connectors and yanked them out of the panel.  
All of the instruments fell silent again.  
River took his hand, and together they ran down the steps and into the Tardis, to reconnect the console to the radio satellite. 

 

_____________________________________ 

Inside the Tardis with everything connected, the blips and beeps of the montiors and the hum of the Tardis engines were not enough to drown out the deafening silence pounding in River’s ears.  
Perhaps it was the sense of impending dread that had filled her and was now surrounding her like a heavy cloud.  
Out of the corner of her eye something caught her attention.  
She suddenly looked over at the Doctor and realized that he had been speaking to her.  
She shook out her hair and placed her hand on her forehead…”I’m sorry Doctor, I didn’t hear…What did you say?”  
“It’s there River, what I suspected on the radio satellite observation monitors, you can see it clearly here…”  
He pointed to the main Tardis console screen, angling the side of it so that she could get a better view.  
But instead she closed her eyes for just a moment.  
She didn’t really want to see.  
But she gathered her energy, took a deep breath, and moved closer to the Doctor and the Tardis monitor.  
“Okay, what am I looking at…”  
On the screen was a magnificent orb, mauve in color, but with jagged gashes scorched onto its surface, exuding a dangerous pulse of light.  
The Doctor pointed at the sphere, as it spun on the screen… “It’s a rogue planet River, not bound to any star, it’s spinning dangerously close to Darillium’s solar system.”  
“Why is it glowing?”  
“It has a very powerful magnetic field, creating a sort of auroral halo of light… it’s sometimes called a brown dwarf or a failed star…”  
“And it’s spinning…”  
“Yes, it’s spinning so fast that it completes a full rotation in less than two hours... like a mad top through space. Unlike other types of planets, it was formed as nearby pressurized gas clouds contracted. It’s more dense than stars, and therefore with its own very slowly escaping gas pressure and heat it can run its engines for trillions of years.”  
“Trillions of years?” River asked.  
The Doctor nodded.  
“Have you ever seen anything like it?”  
"When Mutter’s Spiral was new, and the Earth had just formed, a rogue planet hit it. And like the Voord’s planet, the smaller of the two was destroyed. The earth’s crust cracked, molten lava poured out of every oriface. It was literally hell on Earth across the entire planetary surface.”  
"And the rogue planet?”  
“Gravity pulled together fragments from the collision. It became the moon…. although later on...”  
River shook her head, interrupting... refocusing… “But the Earth was bigger.”  
The Doctor nodded gravely.  
River continued, “And in this case?”  
“This rogue planet is about 20 times as large as Darillium.”  
“It will eradicate this planet on impact?”  
“There isn’t a word for that level of destruction River….” He paused and took a deep breath. He could see River’s shoulder’s tense as she braced herself, "At the rate it’s spinning, it’s 15 lightyears away from us, but there’s another problem River…"  
"Tell me."  
"You and I probably wouldn’t see the destruction anyway."  
She took another deep breath. “Because…”  
“As it enters this solar system it will almost immediately change the gravitational orbit of the planets. Its massive magnetic field is 200 times stronger than Darillium’s sun and it would pull on the gravity of all the orbits, and ….”  
“Just say it, Doctor.”  
“It would push Darillium into the Sun. It would be day River. Our night would be over.”  
“How much time?”  
“I don’t know River, I haven’t calculated that far, it depends on multiple factors…”  
“Doctor, how much time….”  
“Not long River. Once it enters the solar system, we wouldn’t have long at all before the first rays of light illuminate the sky.” 

 

______________________________ 

River walked over to white wall roundel and opened it.  
Silently she pulled out two crystal stemless bulb glasses and filled them with more than a moderate quantity of honey colored pure malt whiskey.  
Walking back to the Doctor, she handed him a glass.  
"I thought we might need a restorative,” she said.  
He met her eyes. "2 drams for me please."  
She nodded, understanding.  
She went back and doubled the amount in both glasses.  
He had brought his glass to his lips before River could speak, "I won’t give up Doctor. We can find a way.. I'll find a way… no matter what. Not just for us but for everyone else on Darillium.”  
The Doctor slowly swallowed his whiskey, he could taste the wood from the aging barrels and the sweet notes of caramel and almond as their aroma floated from his throat and permeated his mind.  
“We’ll try River. I’ll go and get a closer look. But you should stay; it will increase the chances that I can make it back to you.”  
But she shook her head.  
“I think that you should stay, because no matter what happens to me, the Tardis will find its way back to you…”  
“Let’s plot out a plan, and then we’ll figure out the logistics….”  
River and the Doctor went over to the monitors and collected more data on the rogue menace that was whirling through space toward them. There had to be a way to pause its momentum and use it’s magnetic resonance to allow the Tardis to tow it somewhere.  
But where can you unleash a planet sized tornado?  
“Here!” River pointed at a map on the screen. “I know that star cluster. There are many stars there, but very few planets. The planets that are there are new and uninhabited and still forming. The nebula around them will obscure us and provide a reasonable boundary for the rogue planet to settle.”  
The Doctor smiled softly at her. “I think you’re right River.” He pulled her softly into his arms to kiss her, but instead just held her gently and stroked her hair. “We just have to plan out the rest of the strategy now,” he whispered into her ear, "…. but first, can you unplug the Tardis from the radio satellite?”  
She reached out and held his hand a moment and smiled.  
“We’ll beat this yet. Don’t give up.”  
He smiled at her.  
She walked out of the door and climbed up the satellite base and unplugged the cabling.  
Below her, an eerie fog had begun to rise up from the ground.  
And a sound…. It was the cloister bell. It was ringing below, echoing around her, as the sound of the Tardis engines revved into action.  
“Doctor! Doctor don’t you dare!” River shouted, as she slid down the metal beams and ran toward the closed door. 

 

_____________________ 

River reached the Tardis seconds before it dematerialized.  
She wouldn’t have reached it at all, but both doors swung upon before she had even laid a hand on them.  
The Tardis didn’t want to leave her behind.  
Wind violently whipped around her as the Tardis began to elevate off of the ground and River struggled to pull herself inside.  
The doors slammed shut behind her, the sound startling the Doctor.  
River stood up and looked back at the doors, “Thank you, I couldn’t have said that better myself!”  
“River! What are you doing here?”  
River ran to the console. “I’d say knocking you out Doctor, but bully for you, I left the handcuffs in the bedroom.”  
The Doctor ran over to her side, to the switches she was manipulating.  
“River, I won’t risk you, you can’t come.”  
“Well, I am coming. Because whatever we do, whatever we face, we do it together.”  
She paused and placed her hand on the largest lever handle and looked over expectently at the Doctor.  
He exhaled the breath that he had been holding, placed his hand over hers, and nodded.  
“On three?”  
“Yes!” River shouted over the clamor of the cloister bell which had suddenly begun madly ringing.  
“One… two… three!”  
On three both River and the Doctor yanked down the long rectangular lever handle, and all at once, it was as the though the floor fell out from under them. The lights in the Tardis fazed out and only the roundels flashed with a rolling sapphire light.  
River and the Doctor were tossed apart... the Doctor was thrown against one of the chrome metal stairs... and River, falling and rolling, hit the back of her head on the railing.  
The Tardis in a free-fall, the last thing that River remembered was the sensation of an elevator careening into a bottomless pit.  
The next time that she opened her eyes, she could sense that the Tardis had landed.  
She pulled herself up from the railing and clutched her head.  
That’s when she saw the Doctor, unconscious, his head resting on a step.  
She ran over to him, and placed her head on his brow a moment before he opened his eyes.  
He grabbed her wrist. “River, where are we, what’s happened.”  
“I have no idea!.”  
He held her hand, got up, and together they ran over to the console monitor.  
“We’re back River. We made it back to Darillium!”  
River took the controls and typed furiously, pulling up the back logs.  
“One minute Doctor. We were gone for one minute!”  
He picked her up and spun her around, laughing.  
“The Tardis saved us, she saved us again!”  
“But how Doctor?”  
He read through the logs and pointed at the code, “Here River, she activated the emergency protocol and froze the control room in a time loop to protect the two of us. In that moment that we were falling, she towed the rogue planet to Messier 45, the Pleiades star cluster!” 

 

_____________________________ 

The Doctor and River sat next to each other in the kitchen. The Doctor ever so gently brushed the curls from the crown of her head. “That’s quite a bump,” he concluded.  
River flipped her massive rich auburn mane back and smirked at him. “Gee thanks.”  
He placed a kiss on her forehead and smiled.  
The tea pot whistled impatiently and the Doctor got up to bring them each a cup of tea.  
“So, the Tardis took over control and alone towed the rogue planet to the Pleiades,” he began to tell River as he poured, “Along the way, the suspended force of its natural spin built up internal energy while the Tardis pulled it along, and as a result, it spun out like a gyroscope when released.”  
“Oh, dear.”  
“No, you’ll like the next part. Rather than play a galactic level ping pong game, it some how ignited nuclear fusion at its core.”  
River, who had been blowing softly on her cup, looked up and grinned, “are you saying we made a star?”  
The Doctor sat down next to her and took a loud sip. “Well, it will never be a supergiant, but for now, yes, it’s officially a new star, twinkling up there through the Merope nebula. 

 

___________________________ 

A knock at the Tardis door made River’s head snap around.  
“They’re here!” she threw her hands up in the air and then reached out to grab the Doctor’s arm and tug him along gently.  
His eyebrows furrowed and he looked at her in confusion.  
“Who’s here River?”  
“Why everyone of course, our first-footers!”  
She flung open the doors, and every friend they’d made on Darillium poured in, shaking their hands, presenting small gifts of bread and wine and spirits… and coal, because River had mentioned that it was traditional so that the hosts could keep their house warm through the long winter months.  
“River!” the Doctor whispered loudly to her, “Why was that Voord that just passed wearing cycling shorts over his black bodysuit? I’m never going to be able to unsee that!”  
She laughed, and linked her arm through his as she turned him and led him up the stairs following the path of their friends.  
“Don’t be unkind!” she whispered back, then laughed again, “although they were rather tight!”  
“Why River?”  
"Ah, well, as it happens, I included attire suggestions on the invite."  
“Oh?"  
“Yes, remember when we last discussed the Tardis squash courts?"  
"And you wondered why the Tardis has 7?"  
“Exactly,... and I warned you to use them or lose them…."  
The Doctor froze and turned to his wife, "River, what have you done!"  
She grinned, "Organized a tournament for you, so that we can make sure they’re all put to good use."  
"You want me to spend Hogmanay playing squash?"  
“No," River turned around and passed him a racket with a wink, "I want you to spend Hogmanay winning at squash. Good luck!”  
The tournament was great fun, and everyone participated, except River who was playing hostess and did have that huge bump on her head. The Doctor easily won the tournament, finally besting Omnitek the Voord leader in the final match, winning the first two and the final set. They sat down after the games and ate the food the Doctor had prepared in the morning, after which they had a rousing ceildh dance.  
They shared stories, and laughed at the whole year of adventures. The Doctor raised his glass in a toast to River, and everyone cheered her on until the Doctor walked over to her and bent his head to kiss her. He may have lost his head for a moment there because the resounding cheer that arose from seeing that kiss was certainly louder than a sonic boom.  
They all danced and played some more, until all the bottles had been emptied, and the hours had slipped away. 

 

__________________________

The last of their first-footers gone, the Doctor and River sat outside enjoying the celestial offerings of the night sky.  
They sat on their thick green plaid picnic blanket inside the shell of the Tardis atmosphere, ate warm black bread and a traditional stovies stew which the Doctor had quickly thrown together from leftovers.  
It was just a single cast iron pot, two spoons, a shared loaf torn to pieces, and a single bottle of apple cider. But to both of them it was a feast. They laughed and talked and watched the heavens.  
Hours earlier they hadn’t known if they’d make it here, or how many more hours they’d have together, but suddenly this new year continued to brim with possibility … and they weren’t going to waste it.  
The sky under the moons of Darillium was clear, and every star in the heavens seemed eager to outshine its neighbors.  
River pointed to a cluster of light in the sky and asked the Doctor, “Are those the Pleiades?”  
He nodded, “Yes… they seem even brighter here than on Earth, don’t they.”  
River smiled in agreement and moved closer to him.  
The Doctor wrapped his arm around her, and tugged her closer for warmth.  
He passed her the bottle of cider so that she could drown down the last sip.  
“What is the story of the lost pleiad River?”  
“There are so many… almost each culture on Earth had one… but the most well known was about seven sisters. The sisters were the daughters of Atlas, the Titan who held up the Earth in his arms.  
Six sisters each married immortals, but one sister named Merope fell in love with a mere mortal, a human king.  
He was supposed to be very clever, and he did his best to wield his influence.  
But despite several less than savory transgressions, she loved him and was faithful to him.  
When he died, he bade her not to follow any of the death rituals.  
Instead of a lauded king, he arrived in Hades as a pauper, without clothes or money.  
He begged to be returned to life for a few days to convince his wife to follow the rituals.  
His request was granted, but it turned out that it had all been a rouse to escape death.  
Back with his wife, he was able to hide from death for many years, and they shared that time together happily.  
It is said that her star can not be seen in the cluster because she wears her hair down and covers her face with a veil to mourn her lost love.”  
“That’s quite a tale.”  
River shrugged. “I never really thought about it, but... he wasn't worthy of her…”  
“Is that why you didn’t start the story with, “Once upon a time…”, he asked tucking a wayward curl behind her ear.  
River’s laughter rang out in the valley ...“Not every story starts that way Doctor…”  
He ran his finger slowly across her jaw, “perhaps the best ones do…”  
She smiled up at him, “Do you think so...?”  
“Absolutely.”  
River sat up and reached into her coat pocket.  
She pulled out her pen and Darillium journal and opened it to the first page.  
And then wrote across the top, in tall clear letters: “Once upon a time…”  
She put the book back in her pocket and brushed a kiss on the Doctor’s cheek.  
“I think so too…"

 

_______________ 

Hours later, their plates and picnic cleared away, River and the Doctor lay outside, nestled in each other’s arms. They’d covered the ground in a mound of blankets and pillows to stay warm.  
River pointed to a small light in the Pleiades, “Do you think that’s our star Doctor”.  
“Perhaps, shall we name it ‘River'?”  
River shook her head softly in his arms, “No, we’ll have to think of a new name together, because really it was the three of us that made it happen: You, me, and the Tardis.”  
Overhead, some of the moons were setting and in the darkness the depth of space became clearer.  
Even more planets and stars and galaxies became visible.  
Then one by one, hundreds of shooting stars began to streak across the sky.  
“Look at that River, we must have kicked off some dust and rock when we crossed the atmosphere.”  
River looked up adoringly at the heavens, “Shut up and make a wish Doctor.”  
He gathered up closer in his arms and whispered, “I made a wish today, and it already came true.”  
She looked into his eyes and could see the shooting stars reflected there. Such a large Universe, and yet an even more expansive love could fit in this man.  
“Happy New Year Doctor,” River said.  
He bopped her nose, then rolled the naked angel that was his wife on top of him, “Happy New Year River.” 

______________________

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I really hope that you are enjoying the "Under the Moons of Darillium" Series!  
> The Doctor and River will see you soon, in Part 15 - Doctor Docent!


End file.
